


on a string

by ragnasok



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Breathplay, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Magic-Users, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Predicament Bondage, Resurrection, Sakaar Trash Party, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 22:07:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15277203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ragnasok/pseuds/ragnasok
Summary: Loki doesn't expect to wake up. He especially doesn't expect to wake up and find the Grandmaster at his bedside.





	on a string

**Author's Note:**

> So first of all I thought, "What if I wrote an IW fix-it or three?", so I went and did that. And then I thought, "What if I wrote something _like_ a fix-it, except everything was terrible?", so I did that too, and here it is.

Loki dreamed of light.

It was golden and so warm: the heat of the sun on a lazy midsummer afternoon; the comfort of sitting too close to a roaring fire in the depths of winter. It cocooned him, wound itself around him in a million shining strands. The sight put him in mind of Mother at her weaving—and then he was at her knee, watching her work, her hands deft and sure. She looked down upon him with a smile. Beatific, uncontaminated by the sadness of later years. He was a child again, surely, being indulged after some little accident at play or some spat with Thor.

The fire sputtered, throwing off sparks, and the light flared. Pain flared, too, throbbed for a moment in his temple and then was gone. He must have fallen and hurt himself—

But the dream was fading. Mother and the comforting fire receded into the distance until he saw her like a painted miniature, set against a black background as vast as the sky. 

Loki felt himself float in the space between dream and waking, not quite breaking the surface. There was a vague sense of movement nearby, then the shifting of the mattress beneath him as somebody sat on the bed. 

He opened his eyes and immediately closed them again because everything was too bright.

“Hey, uh, sleeping beauty? Gonna have to join us sometime, you know.”

Ah. At the sound of that too-familiar voice Loki screwed his eyes more tightly shut, hoping to put off, for a moment, the inevitable announcement of a new round of festivities. 

Though, he didn’t feel quite as bad as he usually did. Scarcely a morning had passed since his arrival on Sakaar without a pounding head and a parchment-dry throat, and the offer of some exotic pick-me-up from the Grandmaster’s personal pharmacy to snap him out of it. Perhaps he’d slept through a whole day and night? But the Grandmaster would never have let that happen. He liked to keep tabs on his companions—just look at how quickly he’d snapped into anger when he discovered the Hulk missing.

It all came back to him, then. Thor. The Hulk. The escape from Sakaar with that motley crew of gladiators who’d accepted him rather too readily as one of their own. (Had his position in the Grandmaster’s household been lower than he’d realised? They ought, surely, to have shot him for a heartless oppressor before inviting him onto the ship.) And Hela, and Surtur, and the flight from Asgard, and then—

Loki shot upright in the bed, one hand flying to his throat at the memory. 

The Grandmaster sat forward, giving him a smile that wasn’t, quite. “All, ah, starting to come back to you now?”

Loki swallowed hard. “Mostly,” he said. “There are a few things missing. How I got here, for example.”

 _Here_ seemed to be the cabin of a small ship, a room furnished with the bed he lay on—not strapped down, which came as a surprise, though he had wit enough not to be grateful for it just yet—and a drinks cabinet. The ceiling twinkled with multicoloured lights. Not a million miles from similar compartments on the Commodore, though the bed was only made to accommodate three or so.

One of the Grandmaster’s ubiquitous attendants, a woman dressed all in gold, poured something pink and syrupy into a glass and handed it to the Grandmaster. He took an appreciative sip before answering, closed his eyes and gave a pleased hum. Loki got the distinct feeling that his discomfort was being savoured. 

“You see,” the Grandmaster said, at last, “there I was, just lost my planet, Topaz dead—” Here, he wiped at his eye with the sleeve of his robe, though Loki wasn’t sure there was actually a tear there. “—abandoned by all but my most loyal assistants, Ora and, uh—the other one.” He flapped a hand in the direction of the woman who’d handed him the drink. “Fair-weather friends, you know, just—dreadful. Happy to drink my cocktails and bet on my games, but the moment things go a _little_ way south…” He shook his head sadly. “Anyway, there I am, narrowly escaped on my third-favourite ship, just floating around wondering what to do with myself. And what should I hear but a distress beacon from my _second_ -favourite ship? That’s, ah, that’s the one that you and that bunch of whatever-they-were ran off with, by the way. So, naturally, I came right on over to take a look, and what should I find but my very favourite new friend floating around in the wreckage, dead as a doornail.”

Wreckage. That meant—

“Thor,” Loki heard himself say. It was a demand, and given his current situation he could not afford to demand things, but he could do nothing to calm his voice. “My brother. Did you—?”

“Brother, brother—oh, you mean Sparkles? Not a whisker. And, uh, believe me, if we’d seen him we would’ve picked him up.” The Grandmaster grinned. There was nothing friendly in it.

That should have reminded Loki that his own position was, to put it lightly, a precarious one. This had clearly been no act of kindness. He should have cleared his mind and focused on damage limitation. Instead he felt hope and despair clutch at his heart in tandem, leaving no place for fear ( _sense_ ) to dig its claws in. 

The Ark was destroyed. The last of Asgard’s people gone, and his own last stand in vain. But if Thor had not been among the dead, then perhaps there was still hope. Perhaps he still lived; perhaps he might yet foil Thanos. Though, remembering the cold, inexorable tightening of the Titan’s grip, Loki found it hard to believe that was possible.

It was that which reminded him what else the Grandmaster had said. The Grandmaster was watching him expectantly now, yet Loki could not help but hesitate before he voiced the question.

“You said—” he managed, at last. “You said I was dead.”

The Grandmaster actually rolled his eyes. “Finally, he starts asking the right questions! Anybody ever tell you your priorities are seriously out of whack?”

A small, hysterical part of Loki wanted to laugh. “Frequently.”

The Grandmaster ignored his answer, or perhaps hadn’t required one; it was often hard to tell. “Anyway, you were, ah—yeah, you were gone.” He drew his finger across his throat and crossed his eyes in a childish parody of death. “Dearly departed, no longer with us, late of this cosmos. So, really pretty lucky for you I happened along, huh?”

“Yes,” Loki agreed faintly, since it wasn’t as though he could say anything else. “Very lucky.” And then, because he’d never quite been able to resist knowing what he shouldn’t, “How?”

“How’d I stitch you back together, you mean?” The Grandmaster cocked his head. “Well, hey, you dabble, so I’m gonna show you. I think you might appreciate this.” 

He leaned forward, extending a hand, and Loki felt them a moment before he saw them. Warm golden threads of light reached from the Grandmaster’s fingertips into his body. They touched his heart; his throat. They pulsed like veins, and Loki could feel their power flowing into him, the steady hum of it buzzing pleasantly beneath his skin.

“Pure energy, essence of the cosmos, first cause—whatever you wanna call it,” the Grandmaster said. “It’s, uh—it’s life! And if you learn to pull the strings right, it’s amazing what you can do with it.”

“Yes,” Loki echoed. “Amazing.” He didn’t have to lie. Truly, this was a kind of power he’d rarely seen. To bridge the great divide as easily as breathing and pluck a being intact and unchanged from the land of the dead—even Odin had been unable to do that. There were few things Loki could still be sure of where his father was concerned, but that he would have brought back Frigga had he been able—well, that was one of them.

“And hey,” the Grandmaster said then, voice as light as silk, “if I change my mind…”

He curled his fingers in tight, making a fist. And Loki could not breathe.

He felt it all over again. The stony pressure of Thanos’ hand. The frantic flutter of his heart as his body screamed for air. His hands flew once more to his throat, scrabbling to fight off the attack, but found nothing to grasp at. His fingers slid through the glowing threads of the Grandmaster’s power as though through water.

Black spots danced in his field of vision. The light began to fade and the cold was in him again—the deathly cold of the beyond, creeping out from the heart of him and along each limb, turning living flesh to dead meat.

Abruptly, the pressure went away. Loki gasped for air, too relieved, for the moment, even to brush away the tears that had sprung to his eyes.

The Grandmaster patted his arm. “Pretty neat, huh?”

Loki wasn’t sure if an answer was required of him, but in any case, all he could manage to do was cough weakly. When he raised a hand to cover his mouth, he saw that it was trembling.

The Grandmaster sat back and did that birdlike tilt of his head again. “Of course,” he went on, “this—this isn’t something I do for just anyone, you understand? Nearest and dearest only. And you and me—well, I _thought_ we’d gotten pretty close, you know?”

Loki nodded, eyes still watering slightly, and thought it best not to speak. 

If one wanted to get ahead on Sakaar, attendance at the Grandmaster’s parties was mandatory, and the revelry was rarely confined to drinking and gambling. Those particularly favoured might be invited to one of the Grandmaster’s private rooms to continue the festivities. Loki had quickly learned to adopt a façade of cheerful hedonism, and to get through the evenings with a combination of intoxicants and increasingly vivid fantasies about the various accidents he might arrange for the Grandmaster in time. Clearly, he’d been over-optimistic in his imaginings.

The hand that had been on his arm was now on his knee. The touch seemed to spark a faint connection, to set something humming beneath his skin.

“But then,” the Grandmaster said, brows knitting together in disappointment, “I sent you to bring back Sparkles and my champion, and instead you palled up with them! And then you just—skedaddled, with a bunch of my contenders _and_ my second favourite ship! After I’d welcomed you onto my planet, introduced you to all my favourite people, given you a makeover—seriously, all that black wasn’t doing you any favours, take it from me.” He waved a hand. “Anyway, point is, you can see how that might have seemed a, a smidgen ungrateful, right?”

The Grandmaster had seemed content to monologue up until this point. Now he paused and fixed Loki with an expectant look.

Loki went quite still as the full desperation of his situation hit him. He was once more at this madman’s mercy, his very life dangling by a thread. His people were gone, and even Thor—if he lived, Loki thought, with a cold pang in his chest—surely thought him dead. 

Not a soul in the cosmos knew where he was. Nobody was coming to rescue him. 

He lowered his head and looked up at the Grandmaster through his lashes, mustering what semblance of contrition he could. He feared it wasn’t much. “I’m sorry, Grandmaster,” he managed. “Though I hope you can see I’ve… learned the error of my ways.”

The Grandmaster heaved a theatrical sigh. “I want to believe you, Lo. I do.” He spread his hands. “But our problem is—well, the trust’s gone. Can you blame me?”

 _He’s insane,_ Loki thought, not for the first time. _Completely, irredeemably mad. And here I am stuck on a ship with him in some unknown reach of the galaxy, and who knows when I’ll even see another living soul?_

He glanced demurely down once more. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you…”

The Grandmaster tapped a blue-lacquered nail against his chin. “I _want_ to believe you.”

“Your champion,” Loki blurted out. “I know where he went. At least, I know where he tried to go. I can take you there.” 

There was no way he could take the Grandmaster to Midgard. Even if Thanos hadn’t destroyed the place by the time they arrived, the Grandmaster would be hopeless at concealing himself from human eyes, and worse still, he wouldn’t care. Half the planet would be in hysterics, and probably on fire, within a day, and the Grandmaster would be complaining that the flames had scorched his gold lamé. Thor would never forgive Loki for wrecking his favourite realm a second time.

But, if they were anywhere near the place the Ark had been attacked, the journey there would take months. That would be plenty of time to come up with a diversion.

As he’d half-expected, interest sparked in the Grandmaster’s eyes. “I _guess_ that would be a start,” he said doubtfully. “But then, well, how do I know you’re not fibbing again, hm?”

“Perhaps—”

The Grandmaster held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt, I’m thinking.” He snapped his fingers. “No, I’ve got it! You’re just gonna have to trust _me_ for a while, that’s all. Let me—let me call the shots. You can do that, right?”

 _What have you ever not called the shots?_ Loki thought but didn’t say. 

The Grandmaster winked at him. “What am I saying? Of course you can.”

He would have to. At least until they reached civilisation, or until the Grandmaster found something else to distract him, and who knew when that might be?

Had he been a little younger and a little madder, had he not known what it was to die and feel sorry for it, Loki might have found it in him to raise his chin in defiance and say no.

But Thor had not been among the dead.

Loki closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

 

\----

 

He hurt.

He had been here for—hours, he thought, though in the brightly-lit interior of the ship with the uniform darkness of space passing by the window, it was difficult to sense time passing. Sometimes he thought it might have been days. Certainly, it seemed that there had never been a time when he was not in pain.

Those glowing golden threads bound his arms together at the elbows—tightly enough that they would have cut off the circulation had they been made of something more straightforwardly physical—and at the wrists. They pulled his arms up toward the ceiling, forcing his head down and making his shoulders burn with the strain of it. He could ease the pain a little by standing on his toes, but that made the arches of his feet ache—and with his legs forced wide apart, wrapped round from ankle to thigh with those same glowing strands, it was impossible to keep his balance for more than a moment. 

And the Grandmaster had just—left him here. Trussed him up and patted his arse and said, “Looking good. Just don’t, uh, don’t go anywhere, ‘kay?” Then he’d winked and disappeared, leaving Loki to dangle on a string. 

Except the string was the thread that held his whole life, and if he made a mistake it could be sheared through in an instant, and he did not know the rules.

He wanted to hate every moment of it.

But the warm, living hum of the Grandmaster’s power sank into him and made itself felt there, sending a pulse of pleasure through each nerve with each beat of his heart. Even after—however long he’d been hanging here—his cock bobbed at half-mast, and a shameful, animal part of him ached to be touched.

He couldn’t ask for it, of course. That would be to question the Grandmaster’s plan, and Loki knew better than to do _that_ in his current position. Besides which, he knew the Grandmaster’s games well enough not to think that would lead to an ending. There was no bargaining, except when the Grandmaster decided it would amuse him, and those bargains generally ended poorly for the other party. One could only play along, and wait for the Grandmaster to get distracted by some new amusement.

Out here in the black, that might be a long time coming.

Loki shifted his weight onto his toes again. The instability of the position felt terribly vulnerable, and it forced his backside into the air in an undignified fashion, but there was really nothing else to be done.

Behind him, one of the gold-clad assistants wielded a cocktail shaker with bored ease. Loki heard the clink of glasses, and a moment later she passed by with a tray, paying him no more mind than if he’d been a part of the furniture.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the lies he would tell Thor, later, when all this was over. He chose to believe, for now, that it would be.

 

\----

 

The Grandmaster’s fingers were inside of him. They moved, sometimes. Not right now. Right now they simply intruded, refusing both to do anything for him and to let him forget they were there. Loki moved his weight onto his toes and they withdrew a little, just the tips pressing in past his rim. He rocked back again and they rubbed briefly over his prostate—not enough to be satisfying, or even really to tease, just enough to remind him that this could be pleasurable, under other circumstances. Had been, in fact. He was fairly sure of that, though at the time he’d been so drunk and so fixated on not thinking about his brother’s fate that his mind might have performed all manner of pain-into-pleasure alchemies.

“Grandmaster?” he heard himself say, distantly, and managed to shut himself up. His voice was rough.

The Grandmaster’s free hand caught in his hair and tugged his head back, slowly, so that it hurt inch by inch. “Everything okay down there?” When Loki didn’t reply, he clucked his tongue in reproach. “There’s really no point you getting shy now, you know.”

 _Give me a clue,_ Loki thought, helplessly. _Am I supposed to beg or be quiet? What are the_ rules _?_ Though, he had the sinking feeling that there was only one and it was this: whatever he did would be wrong.

“Please,” he said. “Grandmaster, please…” He did not know what he was asking for.

“Getting a little, ah, impatient there?” The Grandmaster sounded—not angry, exactly. Not pleased, either. “We talked about this, didn’t we?” The fingers probed deeper, but the movement lacked purpose. It was maddening. “About trust? I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to worry about that. But you do have to trust me.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki started to say, because _that_ , surely, could cause no offence—but the Grandmaster’s fingers had already slipped free, and though Loki had hated their presence he trembled with the loss.

“You just take a little time,” the Grandmaster told him, and wiped the slick from his fingers off onto Loki’s thigh. “Think things through. I’ll see you later.”

 _Later_ could mean anything. Minutes, hours. Weeks. 

(There had been one poor bastard strung up in an upper level of the tower on Sakaar, skin striated orange and sunset red, occasionally waking long enough to mutter half-formed sentences to himself. Later, Loki had encountered another member of his species. She’d been bright buttercup yellow, and when she’d looked at the dangling man she’d bolted out of the room to vomit.)

Loki blinked the memory away. _Later_ meant there was a future. _Later_ meant the Grandmaster didn’t mean to kill him yet. _Later_ meant Thor, perhaps. This was the meantime, a thing to be endured. He closed his eyes and did so.

 

\----

 

He was not sure how long he’d been alone here. The Grandmaster had come by at least once more, possibly twice, and fingered him casually while chatting to one of his assistants. Loki couldn’t remember what he’d said himself, or if he’d said anything at all, but in any case it hadn’t pleased the Grandmaster, for he’d been left alone again.

The pain in his shoulders and his feet no longer took him by surprise, but it hadn’t faded into the background, either. It was the fabric of his existence, now. It hummed warmly inside of him, tangled up with the golden threads of power that had brought him back from death. He no longer felt sure that he existed without it—any of it. Surely if it were taken away he would crumple lifelessly to the floor, a marionette with its strings cut.

“—o? You still with us, sweetie?”

Loki blinked frantically, panic making his heart race as he realised the Grandmaster was speaking to him. He could feel the pulse in his throat.

The Grandmaster’s face loomed into his field of vision. His chin was grasped—not roughly, but not with any particular care, either—and the Grandmaster looked into his eyes. Clearly he was looking for something. Loki didn’t have the first clue what.

“Tell me what to say,” he begged, his voice still sounding like gravel. Then he realised he was as good as admitting that he’d lost.

But then, you always lost, with the Grandmaster. You simply had to hope that the forfeit wouldn’t be too great.

This time, though, the Grandmaster’s face split into a delighted grin. “Finally!” he said. “I always knew you’d get there in the end.” He winked.

Loki waited. The light pulsed gently against his skin. The pain throbbed quietly in his shoulders. 

“Oh! Right,” the Grandmaster said. “Say, _Thank you, Grandmaster_.”

“Thank you, Grandmaster,” Loki heard himself echo.

“Now say, _I trust you_.”

“I trust you.”

The Grandmaster gave him a crooked little smile, one hand creeping lower to curl around Loki’s cock, impossibly still half-hard. “Now,” he said, “say what you’ve been wanting to say all along.”

Loki shook his head, the panic rising again. A trap, it had to be a trap. “No,” he said. “What _you_ want. Whatever you want. Please.”

“See? Sometimes you’re smarter than you look.” The Grandmaster’s fingers came to rest in his hair, though it surely had to be a sweaty mess by now, and petted him gently. “That’s why I like you.”

 

\----

 

He was still loose and open from earlier—or yesterday, or perhaps the day before; he no longer had any clear idea how much time had passed—so the Grandmaster didn’t linger over preparing him. He liked to do that sometimes, drawing out the moment until his partners were dizzy with impatience and with holding their impatience in. Now, though, he was quick and efficient, and after a moment the golden strands wrapped around Loki’s legs tightened, opening him wider, and the Grandmaster’s cock was inside of him.

He could not help that he shuddered with relief.

The Grandmaster pressed in, bottomed out and held himself still there. Loki could hear his steady breathing, and his robe brushed against the bare skin over Loki’s ribs. He hadn’t even bothered to undress.

Loki did his best to ignore the humiliation that curled in his gut. There was nobody here to see it; at least nobody that mattered. Instead he focused on the slow drag of the Grandmaster’s length inside him, the way he tugged lazily at Loki’s own cock. It had softened when the Grandmaster pushed into him, but now it stirred to life again and he felt the same pulse right there, the one that was in his throat and in the threads of light that bound him. 

The Grandmaster fucked him slowly, pausing sometimes to be still inside him and stroke his cock, thumbing at the slit and spreading a mess of precome along the length. It hurt to hold still and not roll his hips into the touch, but surely even this measured unsatisfying tease was better than nothing. Better than being left again, drifting unmoored through the hours. He’d never known the Grandmaster hurry to take his pleasure, and right now, patience seemed to be part of the game.

Oh, but it hurt, and his frustration beat in his veins and in the bonds that connected them.

After what felt like hours, the Grandmaster quickened his movements. His hand left Loki’s cock, and Loki bit back an inarticulate noise of frustration. It travelled up to tweak lightly at his nipples, moving over his ribcage, coming to rest over his heart. And his heart felt frantic beneath it, beating like a trapped bird. Loki thought it might leap from his chest and out of the ship and back into the void of space if it could.

“Stay with me,” the Grandmaster said, and punctuated it with a vicious thrust of his hips. Loki breathed in hard, willing his heartbeat to calm itself.

“Of course,” he made himself say. “With you.”

The Grandmaster gave a pleased chuckle and Loki felt the cock within him twitch, as though in anticipation. “So, uh, you said you trust me, right?”

Loki gasped out an affirmation. It wasn’t really made up of words, but, “Good,” said the Grandmaster. “Now let’s see—let’s see how much.”

Loki fought the urge to glance over his shoulder, to see what was going to be done to him. The Grandmaster made no immediate move, though, just kept up that leisurely fucking.

And then there was a tug on one of the threads.

Their invisible grip tightened once more around Loki’s neck.

Once more he was back there. He fought for air, pulse fluttering, and could not inhale. When he blinked the sickly blue light of the ruined Ark seemed to flash before his eyes, and he could see Thor looking at him in despair. He was so terribly cold. This time he couldn’t even fight to free himself, his arms tied up tight and his hips caught in the Grandmaster’s grip. 

He was dying, he was dying all over again, and the Grandmaster was going to let it happen, here, like this, in one final humiliation. Truly, this had been no act of kindness. It had not even been a game. It was revenge.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard the Grandmaster make a satisfied sound; felt a ragged series of thrusts and felt warmth spill inside him.

It all felt like it was happening to someone else. He wasn’t here, he was there, trapped at the moment of his death like a fly in amber. He dangled above the void.

The void grew closer, wider. It loomed up to meet him.

The Grandmaster let him go.

Loki gasped helplessly for air, eyes tearing up. For a moment it was all he was aware of—the cool relief of it, the life flooding back into his body, the rawness of his throat as he sucked in greedy breath after breath. There was no room in him for relief, only for the basest of drives. Survive. Breathe.

At length he returned to himself. The Grandmaster had slipped out of his body and now stood before him in his open robe, one hand coming up to caress Loki’s cheek. He smiled and thumbed away a tear.

“See?” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Loki said nothing. His thighs were wet with come and he still hurt all over, and for a moment he thought it might be better if the blackness of death _had_ swallowed him up.

The Grandmaster gave a flick of his wrist, and the golden threads holding Loki up were gone. He sank gracelessly to the floor, where instinct made him curl in on himself, tucking his arms in close to his body even as the movement made him hiss with pain.

“Aw, c’mon,” the Grandmaster coaxed. “Don’t pretend you didn’t have any fun. Can’t fool me.” He gave a conspiratorial wink and reached down. Loki had to force himself not to flinch, but the Grandmaster only drew a finger along the flat of his belly.

There was a mess there, he realised. Somehow, while he’d thought he was dying, he’d spent all over himself.

His cheeks burned. He couldn’t look up.

“Aw, hey, don’t look so glum!” the Grandmaster told him. “I forgive you! We’re good. We can go find my champion, and, uh, maybe stop off for some good times along the way, right?” He reached for Loki’s hand and squeezed it. “Now, how about a bath?”

 

\----

 

The Grandmaster left him, at last. This time, the solitude was welcome.

There was a bathtub sunk into the floor of the ship, somehow maintaining a steady water level even as they flew. The Grandmaster had fiddled with the settings, squirting some fruity-smelling concoction into the tub, and then said something vague about getting a drink and being right back and vanished out the door.

Loki soaked himself. 

The aches gradually began to fade from his muscles. Perhaps, he thought, there was some sort of painkiller in the water. That would explain why his head felt muzzy and his thoughts came slowly, as though he was thinking through syrup. Or perhaps he was simply tired.

Oh, he was. So tired.

Involuntarily, he reached for his throat again, hoping, perhaps, to reassure himself that the threads were gone for now. When his fingers brushed the skin there, something that was not his heartbeat pulsed warmly against them. 

He snatched his hand back. Then held his wrist up before his eyes.

Something had flared briefly to life beneath the surface of the skin. Its afterimage floated before him. Those threads of power, wrapped firmly around the essence of his being. They were still there.

Briefly, Loki entertained the thought of slipping beneath the surface of the water, closing his eyes and letting it steal his breath once more. Drowning was supposed to be a peaceful way to go; he’d heard that, once.

Then he climbed out of the tub, and reached for a towel.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr.](http://ragnasok.tumblr.com)


End file.
